It is only a matter of time before the stock market plunges by 50% or more, according to several reputable experts.

“We have no right to be surprised by a severe and imminent stock market crash,” explains Mark Spitznagel, a hedge fund manager who is notorious for his hugely profitable billion-dollar bet on the 2008 crisis. “In fact, we must absolutely expect it."

Faber doesn’t hesitate to put the blame squarely on President Obama’s big government policies and the Federal Reserve’s risky low-rate policies, which, he says, “penalize the income earners, the savers who save, your parents — why should your parents be forced to speculate in stocks and in real estate and everything under the sun?”

Billion-dollar investor Warren Buffett is rumored to be preparing for a crash as well. The “Warren Buffett Indicator,” also known as the “Total-Market-Cap to GDP Ratio,” is breaching sell-alert status and a collapse may happen at any moment.

So with an inevitable crash looming, what are Main Street investors to do?

One option is to sell all your stocks and stuff your money under the mattress, and another option is to risk everything and ride out the storm.

But according to Sean Hyman, founder of Absolute Profits, there is a third option.

“There are specific sectors of the market that are all but guaranteed to perform well during the next few months,” Hyman explains. “Getting out of stocks now could be costly.”

How can Hyman be so sure?

He has access to a secret Wall Street calendar that has beat the overall market by 250% since 1968. This calendar simply lists 19 investments (based on sectors of the market) and 38 dates to buy and sell them, and by doing so, one could turn $1,000 into as much as $300,000 in a 10-year time frame.

“But this calendar is just one part of my investment system,” Hyman adds. “I also have a Crash Alert System that is designed to warn investors before a major correction as well.”

(The Crash Alert System was actually programmed by one of the individuals who coded nuclear missile flight patterns during the Cold War so that it could be as close to 100% accurate as possible).

Hyman explains that if the market starts to plunge, the Crash Alert System will signal a sell alert warning investors to go to cash.

“You would have been able to completely avoid the 2000 and 2008 collapses if you were using this system based on our back-testing,” Hyman explains. “Imagine how much more money you would have if you had avoided those horrific sell-offs.”

One might think Sean is being too confident, but he has proven himself correct in front of millions of people time and time again.

In a 2012 interview on Bloomberg Television, Hyman correctly predicted that Best Buy would drop down to $11 a share and then it would rally back up to $40 a share over the next few months. The stock did exactly what Hyman predicted.

Then, during a Fox Business interview with Gerri Willis in early 2013, he forecast that the market would rally to new highs of 15,000 despite the massive sell-off that was haunting investors. The stock market almost immediately rebounded and hit Hyman’s targets.

“A lot of people think I am lucky,” Sean said. “But it has nothing to do with luck. It has everything to do with certain tools I use. Tools like the secret Wall Street calendar and my Crash Alert System.”

With more financial uncertainty that ever, thousands of people are flocking to Hyman for his guidance. He has over 114,000 subscribers to his monthly newsletter, and his investment videos have been seen millions of times.

In a recent video, Hyman not only reveals the secret Wall Street calendar, he also shows how his Crash Alert System works so that anybody can follow in his footsteps

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Don’t kid yourself. Anxiety’s still sky high. Hidden in denial. Fears of a 2014 crash haunt us like bloody horror films, “Dawn of the Dead,” “Friday the 13th,” “Psycho.” The two 1929 and 2014 charts really are scary.

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And that anxiety is now trapped deep in America’s collective unconscious. Reflected in the wild screaming roller-coaster ride of the volatility index /quotes/zigman/2766221/realtimeVIX-1.49% , a loud voice of investor fears.

Yes, anxiety’s just hidden, fighting in your brain, nagging at most traders, readers, most Americans. Sets up a deep inner mental war. Why? Wall Street and Main Street investors are optimists at heart. We have this secret love/hate with bad news. Gotta blame someone. Externalize anger. Shoot the messenger. We see it every time when reporting bad news, like InvestmentNews ominous warning to 90,000 professional advisers last year: “Bond crash dead ahead: tick, tick ... boom: Investors have no idea what’s about to happen.”

No idea, but we feel it. Same reaction when we reported relentless bear rumblings last year from Bill Gross, Jeffrey Gundlach and Charlie Ellis, Gary Shilling, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff and many more. Bad news. Who’s to blame? Optimists strike out: Shoot the messenger.

And yet what’s really fascinating is that so many continue reading columns year after year. We don’t make up bad news. But they feed on it, need to project their feelings. The best stick to their trading systems. Silently take personal responsibility. A classic human trait: Basic psychology: We take charge, or project that which we don’t like in us onto others. Blame them, a common Freudian defensive mechanism that so many do unconsciously..

Inner mental war: Natural optimism + bad news = denial and blame

Yes, optimism is in your head, not “out there.” We want the good news, promises of endless returns. Like the pre-1929 Great Gatsby era: Just before the 1929 Crash, the 10-year Great Depression, Yale economist Irving Fisher assured the anxious masses: “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” Today, behavioral economists tell us the vast majority of America’s 95 million investors don’t want bad news, prefer Wall Street’s perpetual optimism machine. No wonder we lose trillions in crashes.

Today, many see a year of increased volatility ahead. So here are 12 simple warnings to help you make your biggest decision of 2014: Whether to keep day trading, or worse, try it for the first time to boost lagging returns. Or just play it safe with Warren Buffett’s 10 best investments. Or a Jack Bogle inspired indexed portfolio. Or go to money markets. Something less nerve-racking, with secure returns. Here are 12 things to think about:

1. Volatility will increase, making 2014 a high-risk roller-coaster ride

Last week Bloomberg warned: “VIX Swings Widen Versus S&P 500. The CBOE Volatility Index is posting bigger swings relative to the stocks it’s derived from, amplifying the sense of panic when equities lurch like they did three weeks ago.” Yes, earlier Reuters warned, the “demand for protection against a U.S. stock-market selloff” was soaring as “traders scooped up call options in the VIX.” Expect a wild ride.

2. Yes, Wall Street casinos are pushing their luck with happy talk

Markets are in the “5th year of typical 4-year bull,” as IBD publisher Bill O’Neill, author of best-seller “How to Make Money in Stocks,” reminds us: Market cycles average 3.75 years up, nine months down. And averages are old data, not future facts. Warning, optimism never restarts an aging bull. Nor do bear warnings stop a bubble pop.

3. Yes, you can Ignore bear warnings, win big ... but don’t bet on it

Back after the 2008 crash we were early out of the gate: “Forget Roubini ... I’m calling a bottom and a new bull.” Since, many of MarketWatch’s risk-taking traders tell me they didn’t listen to our bear warnings last year, and rode the 250% up all the way, from the DJIA bottom at 6,594 in early 2009, climbing the great wall of worry to a record 16,576 in late 2013.

The US Stock market and the economy in general are headed for a crash, and this is coming in the not so distant future.

Now the stock market has had quite a run since it’s low in 2009 and mainstream pundits are quite happy to keep selling you the illusion that his trend is going to continue indefinitely. But the reality of the matter is that it cannot continue, at least not for very much longer. What we’re witnessing is a bubble. A bubble that has been inflated through the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy and market sentiment, not fundamentals.

So, what are we talking about here? What is quantitative easing and what does it have to do with the stock market?

The Federal Reserve is engaged in 3 rounds of money printing, or quantitative easing as they like to call it, since the crash of 2008. QE1, QE2, and now QE3. Unlike QE1 and QE2, QE3 which has been underway since 2012 doesn’t have a time limit. It will keep printing until the fed decides to end it, and no one is willing to say exactly when that’s going to be. During QE3 the Federal Reserve has purchased 85 billion in dollars mortgage-backed securities and treasuries each month. These mortgage-backed securities are comprised of home mortgages bubbled up and resold as investments; these are also the same toxic assets that set off the 2008 crash.

It sounds really technical and most people’s eyes will glaze over when they hear stuff like this but what it comes down to in simple terms is that the Federal Reserve is bailing out the banks by propping the price of these bad investments. We couldn’t have the banks paying up the consequences of their own mistakes now could we? The official motive for this policy is to prop up the economy so that it can recover, but in practice this is just welfare for the super rich. The evidence for this is easy to find. The number of US residents living in poverty has risen since 2012. It’s now up to 46.5 million people, according to Reuters. This while the stock market has been booming. Why?

Because QE3 has led to record profits for the banks, and banks don’t let extra money sit quietly in accounts, they invest it in the stock market. And as money flows into the stock market, prices rise. Whoever owns the most stocks, benefits the most from this increase. And who owns the most stocks? Well that would be the wealthiest segment of the population. Stock prices have climbed steadily since 2009 reaching new highs in recent months. As usual, rising prices feed investor enthusiasm and people started believing that the party would never end. It’s a recovery! America is making a comeback! Just one problem, this party is running on 85 billion dollars of funny money that’s being injected into the system every month. Sooner or later the fed is going to have to pull back. No one is denying this, not even the fed. Most marketing analysts believed that in September of 2013, QE3 would be slightly reduced or tapered off and as a result there was a sell off leading up to the announcement. However the fed decided not to slow down the printing presses at all, QE3 will continue. Markets rallied quickly after the announcement but then they stalled.

This is without the fed actually making any changes, so clearly investor sentiment is playing a huge role here and that sentiment is vulnerable. Now there’s no way to predict the future with 100% certainty, but there are a number of indicators that point towards a massive downturn in the market at the end of 2013, or early 2014. One of the first warning signs has been the exit of insiders from the market.

The Sentiment Trader’s Smart Money/Dumb Money Confidence Index tracks what the insiders are doing versus what the average investors are doing, and this index shows a sharp divergence developing between the two.

Of course, insiders aren’t going to advertise this kind of thing because they want to get their money out before mad rush to the bottom starts. Why would the smart money be pulling out of the stock market? Well because they understand that markets run in cycles, and bubbles always pop eventually.

According to Ned Davis Research there were 33 bull markets from the beginning of 1900 until March 2009. The average length was 2.1 years. Only 5 of those 33 bull markets lasted longer than that. The current bull market which began in 2009 is almost 4 and a half years old. If this market was natural it would have had a crash at some time ago. However this market is not natural, it’s being propped up with 85 billion dollars of funny money per month. Now of course there are a lot of people who are emotionally and financially invested in this market who will point to the fact that by most indicators it’s still strong.

However if you look at charts from previous bull markets leading up to crashes you’ll see that this is to be expected, markets always look best right before the fall.

Look at charts showing the stock market leading up to the 1987 crash, the collapse of the dotcom bubble in 2000 and of the housing bubble in 2007.

To make this a bit clear let’s look at the 2003-2007 chart alongside the 2009-2013 chart.

According to Carter Braxton Worth, chief market technician at Oppenheimer Asset Management. the correlation between these two charts is 95.5%.

Another metric to look at while assessing the likelihood of a market crash is the Shiller price to earnings ratio.

Price to earnings ratio is the ratio between the price investors are paying for stock, and the actual earnings for the companies in question. When you see the price to earnings ratio rise this means there’s a growing disconnect between the stock price and the actual earnings. There are a number of variations in the price to earnings calculations, but the Shiller calculation has consistently shown the same thing as markets are getting ready to crash. The stock price goes up dramatically without a corresponding rise in earnings. If we look the Shiller price to earnings ratio we see that it’s been rising dramatically since 2009. And right now it’s about to hit a resistance line where crashing usually occurs.

Does that mean that a correction is guaranteed to happen right away? No. One thing that’s really important to understand right here is that markets aren’t just driven by numbers, sentiment plays an enormous role. The numbers point towards underlying vulnerabilities that are exposed when market sentiment changes. Since 2009 the fed has been inflating a bubble of epic proportions. That bubble is going to pop it’s just a question of what will trigger the crash. The Federal Reserve is in a bit of a corner here. They understand that if they cut back on QE3 in any significant way the bubble will burst. Bernanke knows this and that’s why he’s stepping down. He doesn’t want to be in office when the consequences of his policies come home to roost. They want to delay this as long as possible because if it bursts right after a change that they make, they’ll obviously decide on who to blame.

However even if they don’t pull back on QE3, any major crisis that hits on the coming months will wreak havoc on market sentiment. And this will trigger a correction. In such a scenario, the official line will pin the blame on the event that sets the downturn in motion, rather than on the bubble itself. We saw this after 9/11 which knocked the last bit of wind out of the dotcom bubble, even though that bubble was already unwinding. This was convenient because almost no one put any attention in who created the bubble in the first place. Regardless of what triggers the correction, or there’s an external event or a pull back from QE3 and regardless of whether this happens in the next few weeks or months, the crash is coming.

The fed will of course attempt to intervene, however they really have 2 tools at their disposal: The ability to lower interest rates, and the ability to create new money. Interest rates can’t really be lowered any more, and the fed is already pumping 85 billion into the economy every month. Will it really have a significant impact if it doubled down amongst QE4, injecting say 170 billion each month? In the context of a mass sell off, that’s awful. There’s a law on diminishing returns when it comes to printing money, even if you do control the petrodollar and the world reserve currency status. It’s like a drug addict whose tolerance has been increasing even as their body’s reaching the breaking point. To influence the outcome this time, the fed will have to go for broke, and this could easily lead to an overdose.

The real blast won here is how the international community reacts to fed policies. We already see the bank of international settlements calling for an end to the fed’s money printing. And there are signs of currency warfare. Throw a little physical war into the mix and you’ve got yourself a really dangerous cocktail. If instead of ending QE3 the fed adds to it, as they would in the event of a crash, then we’re opening up Pandora’s box and at that point all bets are off.

The man who made $1 billion on a single trade shorting the British Pound back in 1992 is now wagering that U.S. stocks will experience a sharp correction in 2014. According to the latest 13F filed by Soros Fund Management, LLC made available last Friday, George Soros has dramatically increased his “put” position on the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) in the fourth quarter of 2013. In fact, the negative bet by Soros last quarter represents a huge 150%+ increase from his position in the third quarter. (A “put” option is bought by investors who believe that a particular security is going to decline in price, and gives the investor the right, but not the obligation, to sell a security at a set price during a specified time.)

“The value of that holding, the biggest position in the fund, has risen to $1.3 billion from around $470 million. It now makes up a 11.13% chunk of all reported holdings. It had been cut to 5.14% in the third quarter, from 13.54% in the second quarter, which itself marked another dramatic lift on the bearish call.”

The S&P 500 is overdue for a major correction as the last serious movement to the downside in the index occurred back in the Summer of 2011. The question for investors is “when”, not “if”, the next major downturn in U.S. stocks will begin…